We’re into the busy part of the gaming calendar from a ‘seasonal event’ perspective. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and others are crammed into a dizzying series of in-game festivities with daily quests, token grinds, costumes and mounts to keep us busy.

A lot of the events in MMOs, rather bizarrely, are copied from or parodies of real world events. They’re given a new name of course and a thinly veiled lore-centric reason for being in the game, but inevitably they’re very recognisable as copies of an Earth event. This is hardly surprising, if we’re excited about Christmas in real life, why not get excited about Winter’s Veil in game?

This post comes from two angles. Firstly today is the 5th of November, or as we call it in Britain, Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night. This day is the anniversary of a failed attempt in 1605 to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London. Full details of Mr Fawkes and the conspiracy here on Wikipedia. I could see this making a great parody event in a game, as players we could be tasked with collecting 10 barrels of gunpowder and 10 fuses. Then we could run around a maze of tunnels under some castle to lay said barrels, finally we could fight for our lives as we try and flee rather angry guards. Alternatively we could be on the side of law and be hunting clues as to the identity of the conspirators, locating and defusing the bombs and capturing conspirators.

Perhaps EQ2 would be best suited since you have ‘good’ and ‘evil’ cities – so the plot could be against Antonica, with Freeportians leading the plot? Beyond the quests you can also have special fireworks to collect, pictures of bonfires or exploding castles for your house and some masks and other costume items?

The other thought I had was that, in a sense, I much prefer MMOs to be a bit more inventive with at least some of their in-game events. Let’s have new events that aren’t directly linked to real world seasonal festivities. I think LoTRO is probably a winner when it comes to tightly integrating events into the game world. EQ2 does have tinkerfest as an unique event. Taking inspiration from the real world is fine, but slavishly copying it isn’t. There’s a balance to be struck as I’m sure real world-inspired events are popular, but I think beach party events with pretty modern looking swimwear is taking real-world crossover way too far for my tastes.